


Impossible

by TheSigyn



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-10
Updated: 2010-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-14 19:12:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4576410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor is in an impossible situation. He's been banished to earth with his memory sliced and his TARDIS gutted. If only he could gnaw off a leg -- it would be better than just sitting and enduring it. Is there any reason to keep on fighting?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impossible

  
  
“They’re not looking good, Doctor,” Liz Shaw said with concern. It was surprising the rapport the two of them had developed, despite his only being on Earth a couple of months. “How long do you think they’ve got?”  
  
They were standing in the Doctor’s workshop beside a crashed spaceship, inside of which twenty-seven three-inch-tall aliens from the Muldainianaxilpritteitious Asteroid were busily rushing around, making repairs. The entire spaceship had been brought to UNIT headquarters, as it wasn’t much bigger than a billiard table.   
  
Liz Shaw had been delighted with the prospect of meeting an alien species that had no interest whatsoever in taking over planet Earth. These fellows were only lost, and in trouble. She immediately dubbed them Lilliputians, despite the third leg and the violent magenta coloring, because she couldn’t begin to pronounce their name. She and the Doctor were doing everything in their power help the tiny creatures repair their ship and continue on their way. Unfortunately, one of the things which had been broken in the crash was their air-conversion unit, which recycled their air supply and kept them all alive. The little fellows didn’t have time to fix their conversion unit, despite all the help the Doctor was giving them.   
  
“I’d say another three hours with their current status,” he said. “There’s nothing for it. I’ll have to get them an omnitrexlic air converter and fix them a new supply.”   
  
“A what?” Liz asked. “We haven’t the ability to find them a new supply, you said that yourself. The compounds don’t exist on Earth”  
  
“But a bit of molecular readjustment and I can make them.”   
  
“You’ve got to be kidding.”   
  
“Kidding? Of course not my child, what an absurd idea. Would I waste time kidding when twenty-seven lives hang in the balance?”   
  
“But Doctor, that’s impossible. We can only barely create nuclear fission, we can’t begin to readjust entire molecules.”   
  
“I can make an air converter,” the Doctor said. “All I need is a subsonic particle converter and a pair of pliers.”  
  
“I can get you some pliers,” Liz said with a patient smile. “But I’m afraid I’ve never even heard of a subsonic particle converter.”   
  
“I’ll have to make one, then,” the Doctor said, frustrated. He began digging through boxes in his workshop. “Have you any such thing as a molecular needle anywhere in this junk pile?”   
  
“Doctor,” Liz said quietly. “I think you’ll just have to admit that it’s impossible.”  
  
“Almost nothing is ‘impossible’,” the Doctor muttered.   
  
“We can’t change the laws of physics.”   
  
“I do it every day!” The Doctor glared at her. “Or I used to.” He tossed another useless bit of primitive technology back into its box. “If I could just get the TARDIS working I could pick up a converter in the forty-second century -- I wouldn’t even need a credit card.”  
  
“Well, the TARDIS isn’t working,” Liz said, though the Doctor could tell she was humoring him. She didn’t believe the box could travel through time. Right now, of course, she was right — it couldn’t. “And we don’t have the technology to reconfigure molecules, let alone convert them from one to another,” Liz said. “We simply don’t have the ability.”   
  
“Gah!” The Doctor lost his temper, violently pushing away the box he’d been digging through. “Fine then you stupid woman!” he snapped. “It’s all the same to me, let the fellows die! Everything dies on this wretched bloody planet, anyway!”  
  
“Doctor!” Liz looked shocked. He didn’t care.   
  
“Might as well pump cyanide into their ship,” the Doctor continued. “It would be kinder than sitting here dithering about the impossible while they suffocate!” He grabbed his cape and headed for the door. “Do whatever you want to the hapless creatures, I wash my hands of it!”   
  
The Doctor stormed out of his workshop and out to Bessie. He planted himself in the driver’s seat and started the car with a fierce grinding of the gears. Bessie protested with a disgruntled clunk. He sped out of UNIT headquarters and down the flat English roads, muttering under his breath, “Apathetic bloody backwater, the whole place deserves to go up in flames!” He shifted gears as he turned a corner, angrily wondering whether it would be better to drive the roadster off the nearest sufficiently high precipice, or into the nearest sufficiently deep body of water.   
  
That entire crew was going to die, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. There were things he could have done about it, if he could get the equipment or even retrieve the knowledge of how to make it from his own decimated memory. But the TARDIS was useless to him, he still had gaping holes in his neural net, and there was no one on the entire planet who could help him. Including himself.   
  
He’d been wrong to shout at Liz. It wasn’t Liz’s fault, he knew. It wasn’t the fault of Lethbridge-Stewart or UNIT or even Earth. He just couldn’t bear being trapped like this. A prison the size of a planet is still a prison, and as half his mind and memories were imprisoned too it felt like being tied into a straightjacket. It was impossible. He began to wonder if madmen started out entirely mad, or were driven that way by their confinement.  
  
The air whistling past his head was comforting, in a way. He wished Bessie had a consciousness, as the TARDIS once did. But the TARDIS was as shattered as he was, and she was sleeping, keeping herself in standby until such time as he could fix her, or the Time Lords took off their temporal block. He shifted gears again, coming to another turn. Suddenly the gearshift twisted in his hand. Bessie’s insides groaned and clunked, her gears in a free spin, his control completely gone. He slammed on the brakes and twisted to the side of the road. Bessie hit a muddy patch and veered, skidding out of control until she finally came to a soft crash against a privet hedge, which dropped several dead leaves and a few disgruntled spiders onto the Doctor’s head.   
  
It was the last straw. The Doctor’s hands clenched into fists and he slammed them onto the steering wheel. His anger caused the steering wheel to bend, making yet another thing that had to be fixed on his imperfect, temporally fixed, two dimensional limited transport.   
  
The Doctor climbed up out of the car, jumping into the grass with a defiant huff. He raised his fists to the sky and screamed at the heavens. “Is this what you wanted?” he shouted to the Time Lords. “You think driving me mad will make me follow you like a faithful pup, all obsequiousness and admiration? You think I’ll crawl back to you with my tail between my legs begging to be shackled by your heartless pomposity? Well, you can choke on it! I’ll never listen to you now! You can all burn for all eternity before I’ll forgive you!”   
  
He sank to his knees. His defiance was impotent, his anger meaningless. He was defeated, and he knew it. “I’ll see you burn,” he muttered in hollow despair. His head sank onto his breast, his entire body trembling with defeat. He was alone. He’d been forcibly regenerated into a body he wasn’t ready for, marked on the arm by the black snake of a criminal. He had lost Jamie and Zoe, and he’d never again see his dear Susan, or the orange skies over Gallifrey or the twisting ballet of binary stars as they passed into novas, or the dancing colors of nebulae, or the sound of amethyst rain as it poured over the mountains of Verianian VI. Those tiny aliens in their shattered spaceship, broken and defeated and probably about to die, were more free than him. They had a chance to escape the gravity of this planet. To return to the stars. To return to their home. Return to their friends. It was the Doctor who was past all hope.   
  
A car went past him on the road, slowed, reversed, and finally stopped. The Doctor rolled his eyes. The last thing he needed was some concerned samaritan bursting his human ignorance all over the Doctor’s despair. The Doctor glared at the occupant of the car, intending to tell him exactly where he could go with his assistance.   
  
Exiting the car was Lethbridge-Stewart, his well groomed mustache distinctive in his face. “Everything all right there, Doctor?” he asked, jumping down off the road.   
  
“No,” the Doctor said honestly. “What are you doing here?”   
  
“Liz sent me,” the Brig said. “She was worried about you.”   
  
Liz was worried? The Brig was worried? Lethbridge-Stewart had actually come specifically after him? He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, but he was. He’d felt desolated and hopeless, and it was strange how the Brig’s sudden arrival should have changed any of that. He was still just as trapped and broken as he had been thirty seconds ago. “She should worry about the Muldainianaxilpritteitions,” the Doctor muttered.   
  
“The who? Oh, the Lilliputians. Already solved. She spoke to their science officer, and he suggested putting most of the crew in suspended animation until such time as he could repair their air converter. Bought them another twenty-four hours. All they needed was some cyanide gas to shut down their respiratory functions. Turns out it’s not lethal to them.”   
  
The Doctor blinked. Liz had listened to him? But more importantly, what a mad solution! It must have come from some deeply buried corner of his memory, surfacing without rhyme or reason and handing him the solution without supplying him the reasoning behind it. That Liz had realized that spoke to brilliant intuition. Suggesting it to the science officer of the alien ship — that was a complicated process, as they spoke on a sonic wave too high for human ears. It had to be run through a recorder, toned down and slowed at least eight times, and even then the words sounded like a cartoon mouse. Every phrase had to be converted like this, and it took seven times as long to hold a conversation.   
  
And she had worked this out on a flippant suggestion, complex reasoning, and... faith. Faith in his knowledge and experience. She may well have doubts about things she hadn’t seen proven yet, but that was in the nature of a scientist. He was ashamed of himself for calling her stupid.  
  
“I see you’re having some car trouble, Doctor,” the Brig said quietly. “Let me give you a lift back to headquarters. We’ll send a team out to pick up Bessie.” He sounded like he was speaking to one of his soldiers just off the battlefield. The Doctor realized he wasn’t far off — he felt like a victim of war. The Brig took hold of the Doctor’s shoulders and hoisted him up. “Up you come.”   
  
“Thank you, Alastair,” the Doctor said quietly.   
  
Lethbridge-Stewart looked a little taken aback by being called by his given name, but he said nothing. As the Brig opened the door to climb in to his black UNIT car, the Doctor gazed at him. “You realize you’re the only friend I have left in the universe?”   
  
The Brig looked up at him, and then shrugged. “Liz might have something to say about that,” he said easily, and closed the car door.   
  
The Doctor took a deep breath. He was in an impossible situation. He was imprisoned. He was powerless. He was angry. But it could have been worse.   
  
Much worse.   
  
At least he wasn’t alone.   
  
The situation didn’t seem quite so impossible anymore. 


End file.
